To ensure high-quality reviews and ratings, we moderate every review.
To write a review, you must include a valid e-mail address. We will not post
your e-mail address, and we will never give it to anyone else or use it to spam
you. We might send you an e-mail to verify the information in your review.

I once ordered 10 boards, 100mmx100mm, 2 layers. I received them quickly and the quality was good.

But I recently had an issue getting the low price of $13. If your board has multiple designs on it, PCBWay changes the price when they review your Gerber files. My price went from $13 to $125!! The "extra cost" was for "specific technology".

I spent too much time sending them files, waiting for their review, getting the wrong price, which was never the same ($117, $125, etc for the same board) that I stopped working with them.

So if after your boards are reviewed you get the good price, you can buy it. Quality is good. But if you start having extra costs, go away and try some other manufacturer.

First off, I am really impressed with PCBWay's speed, I submitted my GERBER files Friday night(US time -- Saturday afternoon in Schenzen).Within 1 hour my GERBER files were approved and sent off for manufacturing. Several hours later production actually started. You can track the status of each step of manufacturing on their website. The data seems real. Total, it took under 48 hours for my board to be manufactured. About 49 hours after order time, my boards were handed off to DHL. Tuesday morning, I had the boards in my hand. So basically placed my order Friday night / Saturday morning and had the boards Tuesday noon - that's under 4 days - very impressed with this.

I've done several 'standard' 2layer / 10cm / 10cm orders with various Chinese manufacturers & PCBWay has been the fastest by far. YMMV on more than 2 layers where the production quality really matters.

Pricing is similar with other manufacturers - with DHL shipping & other fees they add + coupon that you get it does end up being $10 more expensive then the cheapest option available from a Chinese manufacturer - but well worth it if you care about time.

Quality is very good for the price. Vias are centered well. The design i submitted used their minimum design guidelines & it turned out great - so if you stick to their guidelines you should get good quality functional boards. Silk screen is standard quality for what I've seen from Chinese manufacturers - I used the minimum 6 mil width / 32 mil height and the text does get a bit blotchy at that resolution.

Other reviews mention poor communication on their side - I haven't had to contact them about this order - it was all seamless, but in the past when I have contacted them I haven't gotten a reply. Also when I e-mailed them at their e-mail address my mail was rejected do to a full mailbox .. so yes ... if you're looking for good customer support you probably won't find it here.

One disappointing point is that they charge for multiple designs on the same board - even if there is no separation other than silk screen. I think the extra fee is $9 / design. I don't get why some manufacturers do this as it adds 0 cost on their end. I assume it's because they're not making lots of $$$ of of 10pcs orders ... and are only providing them as a 'sample' so you will submit your final design to them in high quantity. Also they do charge extra for 0.6mm thinkness board.

Another thing that I've noticed is that someone there got a marketing degree and there's no way they're not gonna use it ... their pricing structure is unnecessarily complex... They have their basic PCB fee ( ~$13 ), then they have a shipping fee which seems to be inflated by about $5 ... then they add a "PayPal fee" on top of that ... and they offer you a coupon which is limited to covering 10% of your order and on top of that a store credit type of system which not sure how it works yet ... Overall a basic 10x10x10pcs order with DHL shipping will end up costing ~38 USD.

TLDR: The manufacturer to go for if you're looking for speed & have only one design in your GERBER files.

The boards are good quality, pricing is great but the customer service is horrible.

Don't bother paying their rush price. Their "24 guarantee" is a con. They have gone 48-72 hours every single time I've paid for their 24 service and they've refused to refund each time, despite their "24 hours of free" advertising.

When you try and communicate for any reason, they take DAYS to respond, if they do at all.

There are tons of other companies out there who actually have some customer service.

Also beware ANY positive review you read of theirs, as they pay a $50 credit for positive reviews.

I've run boards on all the major suppliers that pcbshopper covers; for calibration of subjectives, see also my reviews of iTead, seeed, shenzhen2u, oshpark, and sunstone.

I did a run of 200 boards, 4-layer ENIG with PCBWay.

The good news: the quality is outstanding, tied for first place with iTead and slightly better than OSHpark. The copper etch resolution is much, much better than the advertised 6mil/6mil; they could easily handle 4mil/4mil with good yield.

This design was incredibly complex with a giant 780-pin BGA as well as 16 other smaller BGAs. I asked for permission to use 5mil/5mil in a few places and they approved it without extra charge (5mil/5mil requires prior approval and usually results in an extra charge unless it is only in a very very small number of places). The boards turned out absolutely perfect.

There were a few ordering hiccups. They botched the soldermask on the first run of boards, making it too thin leading to missing dams between a few BGA pads. This is a serious problem which they caught, and I'm glad, although it meant they had to re-run the entire job. So ultimately it took 24 days to get my boards, but since they certainly lost money (had to run 400 boards but only got paid for 200) I doubt this will happen again.

Their pricing is fantastic, better than anybody else for 4-layer boards in medium/large quantities.

Unfortunately their customer communication is just awful. They routinely take 4-5 days to reply to emails. The skype userid so loudly advertised on their website is dead (I left a laptop sitting in my office trying to call that contact for a week, no answer). They have NO TROUBLE TICKET SYSTEM which is a huge problem, if you place more than one order they'll get confused about which one you're talking about.

On the upside, they do have a very cool web UI that shows you the progress of your boards through each stage of the manufacturing process, complete with timestamps. This is really cool! However for 4-layer boards they've got the steps in the wrong order, so sometimes you'll see your board time-travel a little bit on its way to you 🙂

Please note that the free blue soldermask isn't the "PCB blue" you're used to (like on Nanya DIMMs; search Amazon to see what those look like, that is NOT what PCBway blue looks like). It's closer to a dark cyan color, and I've never seen this color soldermask before. It's actually pretty cool looking and I think PCBWay is following OSHPark here by offering a unique & unusual soldermask for free as a way to advertise their boards ("hey, where did you get those cool looking deep-cyan/purple PCBs?").

Curiously, I think the unusual soldermask coloring is related to the error on the first run. They sent me three of the bad boards (nice touch!) to demonstrate that they were telling the truth, and the color of those boards was noticeably lighter (but still cyan, not blue). I think they were trying for a more distinctive soldermask color but pushed the limit too far on the thickness.

PCBway offered a reasonable list of options in the service, had very reasonable manufacturing capabilities/tolerances, and overall a good service. I had some delays initially because I forgot a drill file in my gerber zip, but if I had done my part properly it would have been smooth all the way through!

My only negative point on PCBway is their customer service is NOT 24 hour, and it took them 4 days to finally tell me what was wrong (missing drill file).

I ordered prototype boards for a project I am working on. PCBWay put the initial design into review promptly, however they only review new orders for a few hours a day, not a major issue. Cherry, my customer service representative, pointed out an error on one design, which was remedied and resubmitted for approval the next day. Their boards are very good in quality, and although I ordered 5, they shipped 6! Thanks for the spare, I didn't need it but it was a nice surprise. DHL shipping was FAST, only 3 days from China to my door! Awesome!

I paid immediately for my order, it should take 3-4 days to manufacture my boards. Because the status didn't change after a week, I asked why they are not producing my boards... Oops, they forgot to book my payment. Okay, no big deal, I can wait a week longer. But then, my boards were ready to ship out, but not shipped within 3 days, and I asked again what happened: they told me, DHL lost my package but if I WANT, they would be so nice and give me the money back... 🙁 I told them, I need my boards, I didn't order just for fun... Worst experience, worst service.

UPDATE Jun 7, 2015: PCBWay finally sent me the PCBs I've ordered. But also during the time they produced a new set for me, and for some more days after I actually received my order the status on their website didn't change. It still showed my order would be ready for delivery, but not sent. So you shouldn't trust the order status, it can show something completely wrong. Finally my PCBs are perfect, the quality is better than what I received in the past from ITEAD studio. I really like the clear, high resolution silk screen. Another issue is, that items in the shopping basket can't be deleted, they stay there for ever or until they will be ordered. But that's actually not really a problem.Conclusion: totally worth the money, very nice PCBs, but sometimes mistakes with processing and status info

I ordered on a Friday afternoon about 3pm and had my boards Tuesday morning with their standard service. The quality was outstanding and the free blue solder mask made for a nice touch.

I made some errors in my first board design but the low cost made it painless. I've just sent my second order to them with all my mistakes corrected so I'm looking forward to a repeat performance. They also allow you to get free prototype boards with your order which is a very nice touch.